Ed Cutler’s hobby was herbal medicine. His pockets rattled with small glass bottles, and he was always stuffing weeds into his pockets to take home for his experiments. He tried to persuade me to drink tincture of oregano, and rubbed my temples with the juices of passion flowers, which made them throb. The waitresses gulped the stuff as if it was gin, but I was playing hard to get and politely refused. This approach seemed to make Ed Cutler arduous and operatic.
Ed Cutler didn’t see himself as a waiter, and wanted to build a teepee and live in the Welsh mountains, and for me to go with him, and sometimes when he was being particularly charming, waggling his thin hips, and step dancing around me in my chef’s outfit, while steaks burnt on the grill, I nearly said yes.
But although I was flattered, and eager to lose my virginity, his kisses made me feel like I was being attacked by a pecking bird, and when he embraced me on the corner of my street, his lips were thin against my cheeks, mouth and neck. It was like being bitten. Unfortunately this always reminded me of swans. He bought me presents; flimsy jewels and decorated eggs. He asked me to stay the night in his caravan, but I didn’t fancy the sheets, which were grey nylon.
Ed Cutler invited me to go with him to the cinema. I agreed weakly. I had persuaded myself that he was good looking although I had to half close my eyes to see it. The other waitresses were much kinder now I was hooked up with Ed Cutler. They winked at me whenever he walked past. I had joined an invisible girl’s club. My neck was covered in cloudy red blotches.
Before I went out with him I applied some lipstick to my pale mouth, and as I was standing there, trying to be feminine, I sensed someone standing behind me.
It was an unpleasant moment. Jean’s reflection in the mirror was pale and lopsided. She had just got out of bed and her hair was sticking up.
‘I see you’re going out!’
‘That’s right,’ I answered, stiffly.
‘Well, it’s all right for some.’
Her martyrish smell filled the room.
I stormed out of the house.
I met Ed Cutler on a corner. He was wearing a denim shirt and tapping his foot on the pavement, anxiously. He had washed his hair. I was wearing a coat of no particular style. Underneath the coat I was dressed in a blue caftan and a pair of knitted socks. He told me that I looked like an Indian squaw.
We went to see The Exorcist. The cinema was so old that a piece of ceiling plaster fell on my head when I sat down. It was due to be demolished. A furtive usherette sold us a couple of gummy ice creams. Ed Cutler urged me to remove my coat, and then snuggled up to me, his hand resting casually on my bony knee.
The cinema was full. A large man eating boiled sweets was rummaging about on the other side of me. He swallowed the sweets whole. In front of me was a curly redhead who trumpeted loud whispers into her friend’s ear.
Ed Cutler’s hand was shaking.
The film started. Ed Cutler reached into the folds of my breasts, but I was already too frightened for heavy petting. I grabbed his hand and sucked it nervously. He appeared to find this oddly pleasurable and breathed heavily. He grasped my other hand and plumped it squarely on his audacious belt buckle. It slithered downwards which encouraged Ed Cutler to chortle with excitement. He undid his zip enthusiastically. A few herbal remedies dropped out of his trouser pockets and he shook them away with exasperation. I fiddled lethargically in his pants. It was like putting my hand into a bowl of warm bananas.
The man with the sweets started to whimper. I thought he must be frightened.
Throughout the film Ed Cutler wriggled under the palm of my hand, and awkwardly flapped his fingers up and down the blue caves of my caftan in an attempt to caress my inner thighs. I was so confused by the film, and by my own libido, that I clamped my knees together, trapping Ed Cutler’s hand between my legs. He squeaked and then gave up, got up noisily and stumbled to the men’s toilet for some minutes. For the last half hour of the film everything was peaceful, apart from the last growls of the devil on the screen; the large man stopped swallowing sweets, and the redhead curled down into her seat and appeared to be fast asleep.
By the time the film had finished I was so anxious that I had chewed Ed Cutler’s thumb to a pulp. There was a puddle of sweat under my chair. The large man didn’t move, and was staring at the screen with wide eyes. The redhead was roaring with tenacious laughter that got stuck in my hair. I stood up giddily.
Ed Cutler was winking at the redhead. My own head was swivelling around and there was a nauseous voice somewhere in me. I leant down to find my velvet bag among the clutter of ice cream wrappers and nasty thoughts that were lurking on the cinema floor. I knocked the large man on the elbow and he slumped forward. I screamed.
Everyone stared at me. The redhead giggled. Ed Cutler prodded the man’s coat and he fell back. He was quite dead. His eyes were boiled sweets.
It took a long time for anything to happen. We grouped together, Ed Cutler, the redhead and me, looking at the corpse. The usherettes leapt about athletically behind us hysterically fluttering their hands, but our inner circle was suddenly quiet and meditative. I noticed the curves of the man’s ears, the beautiful shape of his nostrils, the gradual greying of his hair, the knot of his tie, the peculiar life that still lived in his face.
When the ambulance men scuttled in we awoke and walked together to the foyer. The redhead told us her name was Alice, and I felt as if I had known her all my life. She was an aromatherapist.
Ed Cutler affectionately squeezed my cheek, and we parted sadly. After that he never asked me to the cinema, or anywhere else for that matter, although he treated me carefully, as if I was a Christmas tree whose needles might fall off if I was shaken.
Soon after our date the Cowboy Saloon went bankrupt and all the cows cheered and had an all-night party in the fields. Ed Cutler enrolled on a needlework course, in readiness for making his teepee, and I became a vegetarian.
Later I discovered that Ed Cutler and Alice married, in a wedding held in a field by the side of a motorway. They had six children, all of whom they named after herbs. I know this because I read about them in the newspaper, as the entire family had lived up a tree protesting against the building of the Newbury bypass. All because of a boiled sweet going down the wrong way.
Note To Myself
Now can you see why I need privacy? I am bad luck. There is something inside me that creates calamity. Wherever I go things fall apart. I am a leaking vessel with a virus, soon to be flung back out in the world. I should be put in a special lead box, or isolated in a high tower. It was ridiculous to think that anyone would ever want to look after me. Gwenny must be crazy.
I wonder if Jean is dead?
The Disappearance
Oona, the boat, and my father disappeared. He set sail and did not return.
We left the door open for him at night, and even lit the fire in the high parlour, but he did not appear. His shadow festered over his desk. Lifeboats trailed the oceans scanning the oily sea for flares and calling for him through megaphones.
Jean was perplexed. Her rotting mast had gone. She roamed the old house in a fret looking for clues. We rifled the drawers of his desk searching for billets-doux, or signs of intention, infidelity, vice or even maps that might be overthumbed in certain places, but all we found was blotting paper and name tags.
We didn’t know what to do, so we had to speak.
At first this was very difficult; like learning a foreign language. I had to alter my whole body vocabulary, my routes around the house, my view of myself and my world. What I found very odd was that Jean was genuinely upset, and I didn’t know why. It seemed to me that all she wanted was to be alone with her music and silk underwear, but now George had gone she appeared to miss him. Christ, they hadn’t slept together since the Night of the Horse.
Gradually and imperceptibly she began to alter his image. His stature became grandeur, his peculiar silence was dignity, his knotting was artistry.
On the day h
e was pronounced officially missing, I came across Jean feverishly tracing his signature onto a cheque. She had lost weight.
She glared at me and shoved the cheque book into a drawer.
I said (with difficulty), ‘What are you doing Mother?’ (I called her mother as it seemed the most formal way to approach her.)
‘He paid for everything,’ she spluttered. ‘I didn’t even have a bank account. That was why I married him.’
‘Does that mean we have no money?’ I asked politely.
Jean didn’t answer. In her eyes I saw wartime shadows of allotment fences and ration books. The days of the dishwasher were finally over.
Then she put on an old pair of yachting trousers and some Wellington boots and trudged out of the house. The other respectable houses in the street huddled closer together and gossiped about my mother’s downfall. She had stopped combing her hair and it fell in greasy lanks around her face.
I followed her. She wound her way to the graveyard and leaned idly on a Victorian gravestone, biting her nails. She was talking to herself. Later she wandered home and lay motionless on the floor in the kitchen.
Mabel came to stay and tried to be jolly, but Jean had shrunk to the size of a mollusc, and clung to the legs of tables afraid that she too might be carried off by the tide.
Mabel boiled milk and stirred spoonfuls of honey into it, and mashed potatoes in an effort to make Jean feel secure. She raised her thick eyebrows at me and shook her head.
Jean rambled, in spasms, telling us that all the money had gone. That George had spent it all. She had searched every bank account and found every one to be in the red. All that remained was a collection of expensive crocodile skin handbags.
‘I only wanted security!’ she moaned, and Mabel clucked her tongue.
‘I went to buy a pot of mustard, on account,’ she confessed, ‘and they refused me!’ She looked at me then. ‘And it’s all her fault!’ she spat.
At this she began to holler.
Mabel scooped her up and put her to bed. I could hear her sobbing all night. I was superfluous. I went to George’s study and unknotted some lengths of rope.
Signs of poverty started to dampen the doormats. I had no ingredients left to cook with; Frank couldn’t pay his subscription to the Holy Order of Orange Energy. I owed Mr Berry, who subsequently ran out of tea bags and parrot food. We floundered from debt to crisis. The telephone was cut off. Some of the furniture was sold, leaving toothless spaces in the house that weren’t there before. Jean pulled herself together, but her eyes had changed colour and her teeth were dirty. She had occasional rages when I was often the target. She told me I was cold and ungrateful. Neither of her children treated her properly, she shrieked. I picked her words out of my clothes as if they were shards of glass and put them carefully in the bin.
I was going through a mostly silent Mao Tse Tung phase, and wore cloth caps and cotton tunics, and Chinese slippers. I moved around the house without making a sound. Jean thought I was like an evil spider.
Sometimes, though, she played the piano and sang wartime songs with Mabel, and they recklessly put the heater on and forgot about the bill. (I often went and sat in the room after they had gone, to feel its steamy warmth. One time I wrote my name on the misted window.) Jean sang so heartily that she lost her voice for days afterwards. Mabel jiggled behind her, turning the music, joining in the choruses.
It’s a long long way to Tipperary.
I was very lonely. The door was always shut.
After such sessions Jean often vowed that she would find a job, and discussed the subject fervently with Mabel, listing professions that she might try, ranging from shop girl to brain surgeon. Jean struggled to see herself in each role. I found it hard to imagine her working. She was not consistent enough.
After Jean discovered a building society account with a small amount of money in it, the phone was reconnected. It rang loudly. I picked it up, suspiciously.
It was Aunt Margaret, my father’s cousin, who having lived frugally all her life was quite rich, and seeking a home for her final years. Without discussing it with Jean I agreed instantly. She was to live in the high parlour on the ground floor. We were to be her carers. In return she would support us.
Catastrophe
Gwenny had gone home to feed her cat. I wobbled to work. On the way out of the flat I could see three large plastic bags propped up against the back wall. Above them a shadow lurked; a cloud of something festering. I averted my eyes. It could be anything; a bad dream, the ghost of a rat. Who could be sure? I studied the ground which was covered with earth worms, wriggling painfully towards distant flower beds.
I shut my ears as I walked past the hospital, afraid that wails from Ward One Hundred might reach me, or that the matron might wrench herself from the television and forcibly put me back in the women’s ward. As I limped past a group of student nurses I heard humming, and looked carefully at the tarmac, afraid that they might have transformed themselves into bees.
I had bitten the flesh of my inner mouth to shreds by the time I reached the institute. It was all I could do to breathe.
As I tiptoed through the monumental doors I thought I smelt unfamiliar uniforms. I quelled this uneasy idea and proceeded methodically to the basement, where at least I still had a chair, and a couple of ancient mud pots to date. Loudspeakers were calling my name, but I ignored them, in case I had imagined them, or in case I was not who I thought I was.
I scurried on. I was aware of the presence of Theobald somewhere behind me, and the albatross above my head. Then I was forced to stop. A large policeman had landed before me, blocking my path. I froze and looked up into his square denim face.
‘You are, I assume, Miss Gertrude Hardcastle?’
I didn’t answer, just in case it was a trick. I smiled instead.
‘Please answer yes or no!’ he commanded.
‘Yes.’ I spoke carefully. The Head Curator was nodding his head behind the owl collection.
‘What have I done?’ I asked, feeling suddenly nauseous. I was afraid that the policeman might start giving me advice.
‘Can you come with us please. We want to ask you some questions.’
It occurred to me that during my stay in hospital I may have missed my interview, so I might not even have a job. I glanced enquiringly at the Head Curator. He avoided my eye and muttered to the policeman.
‘Miss Hardcastle’s been off. She was in a car accident. She hasn’t been very well.’
‘We have to question everyone,’ the policeman countered.
‘What about?’ I asked bleakly. ‘I’m a very busy person.’ I don’t know why I said this as I wasn’t. Dimly, I recalled that being busy was something professional people said all the time.
‘I’m a very highly qualified professional,’ I continued meaninglessly.
‘We know Gert,’ crooned the Head Curator. ‘It’s only routine.’
‘What?’
‘Are you denying all knowledge of the crime?’ barked the policeman.
‘What crime?’
‘She doesn’t know anything!’ squeaked Theobald from the balcony above us, rustling painfully in a new suit.
‘Come with me!’ said the policeman, and we walked slowly back through the anatomy section, then up the stairs past Space and the Universe to the Head Curator’s office. I didn’t like it up there, and the sight of all the stars and planets made me see black holes.
‘If you don’t mind,’ the policeman said to Theobald and the Head Curator when we reached the door, ‘I would like to see Miss Hardcastle alone.’
He steered me through the door, then turned back.
‘We’ll need to trace the girl who worked in the cafeteria.’
Eva. She would be standing in the town centre holding a questionnaire, speaking into the glazed eyes of passers-by on the subject of interest free credit, and how to seal yourself into your house for ever.
‘I’ll phone her,’ the Head Curator said quickly as the door
closed.
I sat down opposite the policeman. His face was grim.
‘Is someone dead?’ I enquired.
‘Last night the mummified body of an Egyptian princess was taken from this building. From our enquiries we know that you and... er... Eva were quite attached to this mummy, and often visited the part of the museum where she was encased. I would like to know your whereabouts last night.’
He sat with his pencil poised, waiting for me to speak.
Tears started bubbling up in my eyes. Everything I wanted or loved disappeared, drifted away, lost substance. I couldn’t bear it any more. I just couldn’t. It was the last straw. The policeman was embarrassed. He had expected me to be nonplussed, not deranged with grief.
‘I’m sorry,’ I spluttered.
‘Could you answer the question,’ he went on coldly.
I managed to say, ‘In bed,’ which he wrote down.
‘Were you alone?’
‘No, I had a friend with me.’
I had been hanging on to Gwenny telling her the story of my childhood in tidal waves.
‘You deny any knowledge of the crime then?’
‘Where would I put her?’ I sobbed hopelessly.
‘That’s what we need to find out.’ He snapped his notebook shut.
‘You can go... but I haven’t finished with you yet.’ I lurched out of the door and into Theobald’s thin arms.
He patted my back and consoled me. ‘Never mind,’ he cooed. ‘She’s been dead for thousands of years.’
A Good Spirit
The day Aunt Margaret arrived I made a cake in the shape of a book, as books were Margaret’s trade. Jean and I pretended to be friends. We waited outside the front door, watching her step down from a black car, driven by some invisible driver who purred off without showing his face. Aunt Margaret swayed on the pavement before Jean ran to hold her up. She was wearing a shapeless black crepe dress with a large brooch dangling from her breast. Her skin was mottled and fleshy. She reached for Jean with a hearty wave and staggered into the tremulous house.
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